Download or read book The Fame of Gawa written by Nancy D. Munn and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the critically acclaimed The Fame of Gawa--originally published in 1986--makes available for the first time this important work in paperback. The Fame of Gawa is concerned with fundamental practices of value creation on Gawa, a small island off the southeast coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, the inhabitants of which participate in the long-distance kula shell exchange ring. Integrating various aspects of the study of society and culture--including the sociocultural construction of space and time, self-other relations and the body, and moral and political problems of hierarchy and equality--Nancy D. Munn shows that it is through achieving fame in the wider inter-island world that the Gawan community asserts its own internal viablity.
Download or read book Tales from Facebook written by Daniel Miller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. Once the preserve of youth, the largest increase in usage today is amongst the older sections of the population. Yet until now there has been no major study of the impact of these social networking sites upon the lives of their users. This book demonstrates that it can be profound. The tales in this book reveal how Facebook can become the means by which people find and cultivate relationships, but can also be instrumental in breaking up marriage. They reveal how Facebook can bring back the lives of people isolated in their homes by illness or age, by shyness or failure, but equally Facebook can devastate privacy and create scandal. We discover why some people believe that the truth of another person lies more in what you see online than face-to-face. We also see how Facebook has become a vehicle for business, the church, sex and memorialisation. After a century in which we have assumed social networking and community to be in decline, Facebook has suddenly hugely expanded our social relationships, challenging the central assumptions of social science. It demonstrates one of the main tenets of anthropology - that individuals have always been social networking sites. This book examines in detail how Facebook transforms the lives of particular individuals, but it also presents a general theory of Facebook as culture and considers the likely consequences of social networking in the future.
Download or read book Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge written by Maurice Bloch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists.
Download or read book Stuff written by Daniel Miller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff. The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as social relations. It takes us inside the very private worlds of our home possessions and our processes of accommodating. It considers issues of materiality in relation to the media, as well as the implications of such an approach in relation, for example, to poverty. Finally, the book considers objects which we use to define what it is to be alive and how we use objects to cope with death. Based on more than thirty years of research in the Caribbean, India, London and elsewhere, Stuff is nothing less than a manifesto for the study of material culture and a new way of looking at the objects that surround us and make up so much of our social and personal life.
Download or read book Ambivalent Encounters written by Jenny Huberman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jenny Huberman provides an ethnographic study of encounters between western tourists and the children who work as unlicensed peddlers and guides along the riverfront city of Banaras, India. She examines how and why these children elicit such powerful reactions from western tourists and locals in their community as well as how the children themselves experience their work and render it meaningful. Ambivalent Encounters brings together scholarship on the anthropology of childhood, tourism, consumption, and exchange to ask why children emerge as objects of the international tourist gaze; what role they play in representing socio-economic change; how children are valued and devalued; why they elicit anxieties, fantasies, and debates; and what these tourist encounters teach us more generally about the nature of human interaction. It examines the role of gender in mediating experiences of social change—girls are praised by locals for participating constructively in the informal tourist economy while boys are accused of deviant behavior. Huberman is interested equally in the children’s and adults’ perspectives; her own experiences as a western visitor and researcher provide an intriguing entry into her interpretations.
Download or read book Anthropological Perspectives on Technology written by Michael B. Schiffer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These fourteen original essays accept a dual premise: technology pervades and is embedded in all human activities. By taking that approach, studies of technology address two questions central in anthropological and archaeological research today-accounting for variability and change. These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art. Each contributor discusses theories and methods and also offers a substantial case study. These detailed inquiries span human societies from the Paleolithic to the computer age. By moving beyond the usual approach of examining ancient technologies, particularly chipped stone and low-fired ceramics, this volume probes for the construction of meaning in the material world across millennia. The authors of these essays find technology to be an inclusive and flexible topic that merges with studies of everything else in human activity. "A provocative and powerful discussion of the role of technology in human cultures. At a time when archaeology has become less focused on theory, and archaeology and social anthropology seem to fracture farther and farther apart, the book is a breath of fresh air."--Professor John Douglas, University of Montana
Download or read book Handbook of Material Culture written by Christopher Y. Tilley and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2006-01-26 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things. This handbook charts an interdisciplinary field of studies that makes a fundamental contribution to an understanding of what it means to be human.
Download or read book The Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society written by Anne Krüger and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society builds on the growing research interest in practices of valuation throughout contemporary society, providing an up-to-date overview of the different facets of research in the sociology of valuation. The handbook is divided into five major sections with attention to the treatment of valuation in major areas of sociological theory, as well as its key concepts, discourses, and approaches: Part I: Theoretical perspectives Part II: Central valuation practices in societal spheres Part III: Cross-cutting valuation practices Part IV: Valuation and societal change Part V: Reflections Together, the chapters in this book characterize distinctive practices of valuation across different societal spheres, such as education and science, arts and culture, economic life, the environment or digital culture and social media. They also examine the role of valuation in contemporary society and consider the ways it effects social change. This seminal handbook aims at taking stock of the development of the study of valuation with a selection of topics that are important for understanding core perspectives and developments as well as anticipating its future orientation. It will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interest in the ubiquity of the valuation practices and its effects on social life.
Download or read book Minerals Collecting and Value across the US Mexico Border written by Elizabeth Emma Ferry and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A jewel to those interested in ore mining, mineral collecting and mineralogy, or the anthropology of value.” —American Ethnologist Anthropologist Elizabeth Emma Ferry traces the movement of minerals as they circulate from Mexican mines to markets, museums, and private collections on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. She describes how and why these byproducts of ore mining come to be valued by people in various walks of life as scientific specimens, religious offerings, works of art, and luxury collectibles. The story of mineral exploration and trade defines a variegated transnational space, shedding new light on the complex relationship between these two countries—and on the process of making value itself. “A novel contribution to the anthropology of natural resources.” —Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology “Highly recommended.” —Choice
Download or read book Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value written by D. Graeber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-12-13 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a widely cited classic, this innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Ignorance written by C. High and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of ignorance occupies a central place in anthropological theory and practice. This volume argues that the concept of ignorance has largely been pursued as the opposite of knowledge or even its obverse. Though they cover wide empirical ground - from clients of a fertility treatment center in New York to families grappling with suicide in Greenland - contributors share a commitment to understanding the concept as a productive, social practice. Ultimately, The Anthropology of Ignorance asks whether an academic commitment to knowledge can be squared with lived significance of ignorance and how taking it seriously might alter anthropological research practices.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies written by Dan Hicks and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of experts, the Handbook makes accessible a full range of theoretical and applied approaches to the study of material culture, and the place of materiality in social theory, presenting current thinking about material culture from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies.
Download or read book Digital Anthropology written by Heather A. Horst and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropology has two main tasks: to understand what it is to be human and to examine how humanity is manifested differently in the diversity of culture. These tasks have gained new impetus from the extraordinary rise of the digital. This book brings together several key anthropologists working with digital culture to demonstrate just how productive an anthropological approach to the digital has already become. Through a range of case studies from Facebook to Second Life to Google Earth, Digital Anthropology explores how human and digital can be defined in relation to one another, from avatars and disability; cultural differences in how we use social networking sites or practise religion; the practical consequences of the digital for politics, museums, design, space and development to new online world and gaming communities. The book also explores the moral universe of the digital, from new anxieties to open-source ideals. Digital Anthropology reveals how only the intense scrutiny of ethnography can overturn assumptions about the impact of digital culture and reveal its profound consequences for everyday life. Combining the clarity of a textbook with an engaging style which conveys a passion for these new frontiers of enquiry, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of anthropology, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Download or read book Archaeological Semiotics written by Robert W. Preucel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-04-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary book examines archaeology’s engagement with semiotics, from its early structuralist beginnings to its more recent Peircian encounters. It represents the first sustained engagement with Peircian semiotics in archaeology, as well as the first discussion of how pragmatic anthropology articulates with anthropological archaeology. Its central thesis is that archaeology is a distinctive kind of semiotic enterprise; one devoted to giving meaning to the past in the present through the study of materiality. It compliments standard studies of linguistics and reformulates contemporary theories of material culture. Providing an introduction to Saussure and a review of his legacy across structural, symbolic, and cognitive anthropology, Preucel goes on to present the Peircian alternative and highlights its influence on pragmatic anthropology. Of special interest are the discussions of the interrelations of structuralism and processual archaeology, poststructuralism and postprocessual archaeologies, and cognitive science and cognitive archaeology. The author offers two original case studies demonstrating how material culture pragmatically mediates social relations- one focusing on the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt from 1680-1694 and the other on the New England utopian community of Brook Farm from 1842-1846. Throughout his analysis, Preucel emphasizes the close links between archaeology and other social sciences. But he also contends that archaeology, by virtue of the powerful ideological character of the past, can open up new spaces for discourse and dialogue about meaning, and, in the process, make a valuable contribution to contemporary semiotics.
Download or read book Mundane Objects written by Pierre Lemonnier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise book shows the importance of objects that are considered ordinary by cultural outsiders and scholars, yet lie at the heart of the systems of thought and practices of their makers and users. This volume demonstrates the role of these objects in nonverbal communication, both in non-ritual and in ritual situations. Lemonnier shows that some objects, their physical properties and their material implementation, are wordless expressions of fundamental aspects of a way of living and thinking, as well as sometimes the only means of expressing the inexpressible. Through the study of the most mundane technical activities such as fence building, creating models cars, or trapping fish, we often gain a better understanding of what these objects mean and how they work within their cultures of origin. In addition to anthropologists and archaeologists, this book will also be of interest to sociologists, historians, philosophers, cognitive anthropologists and primatologists, for whom the intertwining of “function” and “style” is the very mark of all cultural behavior.
Download or read book Anthropology and Archaeology written by Chris Gosden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropolgy and Archaeology provides a valuable and much-needed introduction to the theories and methods of these two inter-related subjects. This volume covers the historical relationship and contemporary interests of archaeology and anthropology. It takes a broad historical approach, setting the early history of the disciplines with the colonial period during which the Europeans encountered and attempted to make sense of many other peoples. It shows how the subjects are linked through their interest in kinship, economics and symbolism, and discusses what each contribute to debates about gender, material culture and globalism in the post-colonial world.
